There are few historical figures less suited to modern presidential politics than James Madison.
This is unfortunate because James Madison is largely responsible for creating it.
The man spent much of his adult life worrying about concentrated power. He worried about factions. He worried about demagogues. He worried about majorities. He worried about minorities. He worried about states. He worried about the federal government. He worried about foreign influence. He worried about domestic instability. He worried so consistently and so professionally that historians eventually began referring to him as the "Father of the Constitution."
Most fathers eventually stop checking on their children.
Madison never did.
Which is why one suspects that if he returned today and spent an afternoon reading about executive orders, he would immediately develop a headache.
Not a metaphorical headache.
An actual one.
The kind requiring a dark room and several hours of silence.
Unfortunately, modern politics rarely provides either.
One of the greatest misconceptions about the Founding Fathers is that they trusted politicians.
They did not.
They barely trusted one another.
Thomas Jefferson thought Alexander Hamilton wanted monarchy.
Hamilton thought Jefferson was leading the nation toward French-style chaos.
John Adams believed half the country had lost its mind.
Half the country agreed.
The Constitution emerged not from optimism but from suspicion.
The founders were not designing a government for saints.
They were designing a government for politicians.
This distinction matters.
A great deal.
Madison explained the problem most famously in Federalist No. 51:
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
A beautiful sentiment.
Unfortunately, Congress is not staffed entirely by angels.
Nor was that ever the plan.
The Constitution, therefore, attempted something remarkably ambitious.
It divided power.
Legislative power.
Executive power.
Judicial power.
Each branch would check the others.
Each would restrain the others.
Each would prevent any single institution from becoming dominant.
Madison described this arrangement as supplying:
"the defect of better motives."
This is perhaps the most Madisonian phrase ever written.
Translated into modern English, it means:
"We assume everybody will eventually behave badly."
The system was built accordingly.
The trouble begins when the system stops cooperating.
Modern Americans often imagine the Constitution as a machine.
Insert debate.
Receive legislation.
The founders imagined something closer to a wrestling match.
Conflict was expected.
Compromise was expected.
Gridlock was expected.
The machinery was never supposed to run smoothly.
The friction was the feature.
Madison considered legislative dominance the greatest threat to liberty. This surprises many people because modern Americans spend most of their time worrying about presidents.
Madison worried about Congress.
Legislatures represented majorities.
Majorities possessed power.
Power required restraint.
Thus the elaborate constitutional structure.
Thus the checks.
Thus the balances.
Thus the endless arguments.
America was intentionally designed to be difficult.
Executive orders would initially strike Madison as perfectly reasonable.
Presidents must administer government.
Presidents must execute laws.
Presidents require flexibility.
No eighteenth-century constitutional theorist believed otherwise.
George Washington issued directives.
John Adams issued directives.
Thomas Jefferson issued directives.
The problem is not that presidents issue instructions.
The problem is that everyone increasingly appears to prefer instructions to legislation.
This would concern Madison.
Deeply.
Imagine attempting to explain the modern cycle.
Congress fails to act.
The president acts.
The courts respond.
Congress complains.
The president acts again.
The courts respond again.
Cable news creates six hundred hours of programming.
Everyone declares democracy either saved or destroyed.
The cycle repeats.
Madison would listen carefully.
Then ask a simple question.
"Why does Congress not simply pass a law?"
At this point everyone would begin talking at once.
The founders expected disagreement.
They did not expect permanent performance.
Modern politics increasingly resembles theater.
Congressional hearings become television events.
Committee investigations become content.
Political speeches become social media clips.
Legislation often feels secondary.
Madison came from a generation that communicated through pamphlets.
These pamphlets were frequently vicious.
Sometimes slanderous.
Occasionally insane.
But they generally existed to persuade.
Modern political communication often exists simply to generate engagement.
Madison would find this distinction alarming.
One suspects he would spend several minutes trying to understand why elected officials are constantly speaking to cameras instead of one another.
The explanation would not improve his mood.
To be fair, Madison was hardly naïve.
He understood political ambition.
Indeed, he built much of his constitutional thinking around it.
His famous observation remains one of the clearest descriptions of politics ever written:
"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
This is the entire constitutional system in one sentence.
You do not eliminate ambition.
You harness it.
You redirect it.
You force competing ambitions to restrain one another.
The founders never imagined power would disappear.
They merely hoped to keep it busy fighting itself.
Executive orders become controversial when Americans begin asking whether ambition is still being adequately counteracted.
Madison would not necessarily object to any particular order.
He would object to the broader trend.
The gradual migration of policymaking away from legislatures and toward executives.
Not because presidents are uniquely dangerous.
Because concentration itself is dangerous.
This was always his concern.
One of Madison's lesser-known observations feels increasingly relevant:
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
Modern Americans often read this and immediately imagine dictators.
Madison imagined something subtler.
The slow erosion of boundaries.
The gradual blending of powers.
The temptation to bypass inconvenient processes.
The belief that efficiency is always preferable to procedure.
Madison distrusted efficiency.
At least in government.
This is one of the reasons he remains so frustrating.
And so useful.
The modern presidency would astonish him.
Not because presidents possess more power.
Because Americans increasingly expect them to possess more power.
Every national problem becomes a presidential problem.
Housing.
Healthcare.
Inflation.
Education.
Climate.
Trade.
Immigration.
Foreign policy.
Student loans.
Artificial intelligence.
The price of eggs.
The condition of local roads.
Somewhere along the way, Americans began treating presidents as elected superheroes.
The founders imagined something considerably smaller.
George Washington was expected to govern.
Modern presidents are expected to solve existence itself.
This rarely ends well.
Madison would also notice something peculiar about contemporary politics.
Everyone opposes executive power.
Right up until their side controls it.
Then suddenly executive power becomes an indispensable tool of governance.
A miraculous constitutional innovation.
An urgent necessity.
A triumph of leadership.
Until the next election.
At which point it becomes tyranny again.
Madison would find this pattern familiar.
Human beings, he understood, are remarkably consistent.
People generally support power they control and oppose power they do not.
The Constitution exists largely because Madison knew this.
Perhaps the funniest part of the entire debate is that both sides often invoke Madison.
Everyone loves Madison.
In theory.
They quote him constantly.
They praise checks and balances.
They celebrate constitutional limits.
Then they immediately explain why those limits should not apply to their preferred policy objective.
One imagines Madison listening patiently before developing a second headache.
Possibly a third.
The man spent years crafting a constitutional structure specifically designed to prevent exactly this sort of reasoning.
Americans responded by turning him into a citation.
What would Madison actually recommend?
Probably something profoundly unsatisfying.
He would urge Congress to legislate.
He would urge presidents to exercise restraint.
He would urge courts to maintain boundaries.
He would urge citizens to accept slower government.
This last recommendation would be particularly unpopular.
Modern Americans love results.
Madison loved process.
The Constitution reflects this preference.
The process is often frustrating.
The process is often inefficient.
The process occasionally resembles a family argument conducted by lawyers.
Madison knew all of this.
He approved anyway.
In many ways, Madison's greatest contribution was not the Constitution itself.
It was his understanding of human nature.
People seek power.
Institutions seek power.
Parties seek power.
Governments seek power.
This is not a temporary problem.
It is the permanent condition of politics.
No constitutional arrangement solves it forever.
The best one can do is create structures that manage it.
That was Madison's project.
That remains Madison's project.
Whether Americans still possess the patience for it is another question entirely.
One suspects Madison would eventually leave modern Washington with mixed feelings.
The Constitution survived.
The republic survived.
The transfer of power survived.
The arguments certainly survived.
Somewhere beneath the noise, the system he helped design continues operating.
Messily.
Imperfectly.
Loudly.
Which, to be fair, was always the plan.
Still, one imagines him standing outside the Capitol, watching presidents govern through executive action while Congress holds hearings about why presidents govern through executive action.
He would stare silently for a moment.
Rub his temples.
And wonder why everyone keeps trying to improve a machine that was specifically designed to make things difficult.
Then again, James Madison spent his life proving that Americans could be trusted with self-government.
He never claimed they would make it easy.
— John Handcock